Andrew Bridgen, the former Conservative now Reclaim MP, finally secured a debate on excess deaths in the House of Commons, which took place on Friday afternoon. We provide here a full transcript of the debate, as found in Hansard. A full video of the debate can be found on X.
The speaker is Andrew Bridgen, unless otherwise stated.
We have experienced more excess deaths since July 2021 than in the whole of 2020. Unlike during the pandemic, however, those deaths are not disproportionately of the old. In other words, the excess deaths are striking down people in the prime of life, but no one seems to care. I fear that history will not judge this House kindly. Worse still, in a country supposedly committed to the free and frank exchange of views, it appears that no one cares that no one cares. Well, I care, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I credit those Members in attendance today, who also care. I thank the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl McCartney) for his support, and I am sorry that he could not attend the debate.
It has taken a lot of effort, and more than 20 rejections, to be allowed to raise this topic, but at last we are here to discuss the number of people dying. Nothing could be more serious. Numerous countries are currently gripped in a period of unexpected mortality, and no one wants to talk about it. It is quite normal for death numbers to fluctuate up and down by chance alone, but what we are seeing here is a pattern repeated across countries, and the rise has not let up.
Philip Davies: I commend the hon. Member for the tenacious way in which he has battled on this issue; I admire him for that. I wonder where he found the media were in all this. During the Covid pandemic, every day the media — particularly the BBC — could not wait to tell us how many people had died on that particular day, without any context for those figures whatsoever, but they seem to have gone strangely quiet over excess deaths now.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely right: the media have let the British public down badly. There will be a full press pack going out to all media outlets following my speech, with all the evidence to back up all the claims I will make, but I do not doubt that there will be no mention of it in the mainstream media.
One might think that a debate about excess deaths would be full of numbers, but this speech does not contain many numbers, because most of the important numbers are being kept hidden. Other data have been oddly presented in a distorted way, and concerned people seeking to highlight important findings and ask questions have found themselves inexplicably under attack.
Before debating excess deaths, it is important to understand how excess deaths are determined. To understand whether there is an excess, by definition, we need to estimate how many deaths would have been expected. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses 2015 to 2019 as a baseline, and the Government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities uses a 2015 to 2019 baseline, modelled to allow for ageing. I have used those data here. Unforgivably, the Office for National Statistics has included deaths in 2021 as part of its baseline calculation for expected deaths, as if there was anything normal about the deaths in 2021. By exaggerating the number of deaths expected, the number of excess deaths can be minimised. Why would the ONS want to do that?
There is just too much that we do not know, and it is not good enough. The ONS publishes promptly each week the number of deaths registered. While that is commendable, it is not the data point that really matters. There is a total failure to collect, never mind publish, data on deaths that are referred for investigation to the coroner. Why does that matter? A referral means that it can be many months — or, given the backlog, many years — before a death is formally registered. Needing to investigate the cause of a death is fair enough, but failing to record when the death happened is not.
Because of that problem, we have no idea how many people died in 2021, even now. The problem is greatest for the younger age groups, where a higher proportion of deaths are investigated. This data failure is unacceptable and must change. There is nothing in a coroner’s report that can bring anyone back from the dead, and those deaths should be reported. The youngest age groups are important not only because they should have their whole lives ahead of them. If there is a new cause of excess mortality across the board, it would not be noticed so much in the older cohorts, because the extra deaths would be drowned out among the expected deaths. However, in the youngest cohorts, that is not the case.
There were nearly two extra deaths a day in the second half of 2021 among 15 to 19-year-old males, but potentially even more if those referred to the coroner were fully included. In a judicial review of the decision to vaccinate yet younger children, the ONS refused in court to give anonymised details about those deaths. It admitted that the data it was withholding were statistically significant. It said:
The ONS recognises that more work could be undertaken to examine the mortality rates of young people in 2021, and intends to do so once more reliable data are available.
How many more extra deaths in 15 to 19-year-olds will it take to trigger such work? Surely the ONS should be desperately keen to investigate deaths in young men. Why else do we have an independent body charged with examining mortality data? Surely the ONS has a responsibility to collect data from coroners to produce timely information.
Let us move on to old people. Most deaths in the old are registered promptly, and we have a better feel for how many older people are dying. Deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s show what we ought to expect: there was a period of high mortality coinciding with Covid and lockdowns, but ever since, there have been fewer deaths than expected. After a period of high mortality, we expect and historically have seen a period of low mortality, because those who have sadly died cannot die again.
Those whose deaths were slightly premature because of Covid and lockdowns died earlier than they otherwise would have. That principle should hold true for every cause of death and every age group, but that is not what we are seeing. Even for the over-85-year-olds, according to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, there were 8,000 excess deaths — 4% above the expected levels — for the 12 months starting in July 2020. That includes all of the autumn 2020 wave of Covid when we had tiering and the second lockdown and all of the first Covid winter. However, for the year starting July 2022, there were more than 18,000 excess deaths in this age group — 9% above expected levels. That is more than twice as many in a period when there should have been a deficit and when deaths from diseases previously associated with old age were fewer than expected. I have raised my concerns about NG163 and the use of midazolam and morphine, which may have caused — and may still be causing — premature deaths in the vulnerable, but that is, sadly, a debate for another day.
There were just over 14,000 excess deaths in the under 65-year-olds before vaccination from April 2020 to the end of March 2021. However, since that time, there have been more than 21,000 excess deaths, ignoring the registration delay problem, and the majority of those deaths — 58% of them — were not attributed to Covid. We turned society upside down before vaccination for fear of excess deaths from Covid, but today we have substantially more excess deaths, and in younger people, and there is a complete eerie silence. The evidence is unequivocal. There was a clear stepwise increase in mortality following the vaccine rollout. There was a reprieve in the winter of 2021-22 because there were fewer than expected respiratory deaths, but otherwise the excess has been incessantly at this high level.
Ambulance data for England provide another clue. Ambulance calls for life-threatening emergencies were running at a steady 2,000 calls a day until the vaccine rollout. From then, they rose to 2,500 daily, and calls have stayed at that level since. The surveillance systems designed to spot a safety problem have all flashed red, but no one is looking. Claims for personal independence payments from people who have developed a disability and cannot work rocketed with the vaccine rollout and have continued to rise ever since. The same was seen in the U.S., which also started with the vaccine rollout, not with Covid. A study to determine the vaccination status of a sample of such claimants would be relatively quick and inexpensive to perform, yet nobody seems interested in ascertaining this vital information. Officials have chosen to turn a blind eye to this disturbing, irrefutable and frightening data, much like Nelson did — and for far less honourable reasons. He would be ashamed of us.
Furthermore, data that have been used to sing the praises of the vaccine are deeply flawed. Only one Covid-related death was prevented in each of the initial major trials that led to authorisation of the vaccines, and that is taking the data entirely at face value, whereas a growing number of inconsistencies and anomalies suggest that we ought not to do this. Extrapolating from that means that between 15,000 and 20,000 people had to be injected to prevent a single death from Covid. To prevent a single Covid hospitalisation, more than 1,500 people needed to be injected. The trial data showed that one in 800 injected people had a serious adverse event, meaning that they were hospitalised or had a life-threatening or life-changing condition. The risk of this was twice as high as the chance of preventing a Covid hospitalisation. We are harming one in 800 people to supposedly save one in 20,000. That is madness.
The strongest claims have too often been based on modelling carried out on the basis of flawed assumptions. Where observational studies have been carried out, researchers will correct for age and comorbidities to make the vaccines look better. However, they never correct for socioeconomic or ethnic differences as that would make vaccines look worse. That matters. For example, claims of higher mortality in less vaccinated regions of the United States took no account of the fact that this was the case before the vaccines were rolled out. That is why studies that claim to show that the vaccines prevented Covid deaths also showed a marked effect of them preventing non-Covid deaths. The prevention of non-Covid deaths was always a statistical illusion and claims of preventing Covid deaths should not be assumed when that illusion has not been corrected for. When it is corrected for, the claims of efficacy for the vaccines vanish with it.
Covid disproportionately killed people from ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic groups during the pandemic. In 2020, deaths among the most deprived were up by 23% compared with 17% for the least deprived. However, since 2022 the pattern has reversed, with 5% excess mortality among the most deprived compared with 7% among the least deprived. These deaths are being caused by something different.
In 2020, the excess was highest in the oldest cohorts, and there were fewer than expected deaths among younger age groups. However, since 2022, the 50 to 64-year-old cohort has had the highest excess mortality. Even the youngest age groups are now seeing a substantial excess, with a 9% excess in the under-50s since 2022 compared with 5% in the over-75 group.
Despite London being a younger region, the excess in London is only 3%, whereas it is higher in every more heavily vaccinated region of the U.K. It should be noted that London is famously the least vaccinated region in the U.K. by some margin. Studies comparing regions on a larger scale show the same thing. Studies from the Netherlands, Germany and the whole world each show that the highest mortality after vaccination was seen in the most heavily vaccinated regions.
So we need to ask: what are people dying of? Since 2022, there has been an 11% excess in ischemic heart disease deaths and a 16% excess in heart failure deaths. In the meantime, cancer deaths are only 1% above expected levels, which is further evidence that this is not simply some other factor that affects deaths across the board, such as failing to account for an ageing population or a failing NHS. In fact, the excess itself has a seasonality, with a peak in the winter months. The fact that it returns to baseline levels in summer is a further indication that this is not due to some statistical error or an ageing population alone.
Dr. Clare Craig from HART — the Health Advisory & Recovery Team — first highlighted a stepwise increase in cardiac arrest calls after the vaccine rollout in May 2021. HART has repeatedly raised concerns about the increase in cardiac deaths, and it has every reason to be concerned. Four participants in the vaccine group of the Pfizer trial died from cardiac arrest compared with only one in the placebo group. Overall, there were 21 deaths in the vaccine group up to March 2021, compared with 17 in the placebo group. There are serious anomalies about the reporting of deaths in this trial, with the deaths in the vaccine group taking much longer to report than those in the placebo group. That is highly suggestive of a significant bias in what was supposed to be a blinded trial.
An Israeli study clearly showed that an increase in cardiac hospital attendances among 18 to 39-year-olds correlated with vaccination, not with Covid. There have now been several post-mortem studies demonstrating a causal link between vaccination and coronary artery disease leading to death up to four months after the last dose. We need to remember that the safety trial was cut short to only two months, so there is no evidence of any vaccine safety beyond that point. The decision to unblind the trials after two months and vaccinate the placebo group is nothing less than a public health scandal. Everyone involved failed in their duty to the truth, but no one cares.
The one place that can help us understand exactly what has caused this is Australia, which had almost no Covid when vaccines were first introduced, making it the perfect control group. The state of South Australia had only 1,000 cases of Covid across its whole population by December 2021, before Omicron arrived. What was the impact of vaccination there? For 15 to 44-year-olds, there were historically 1,300 emergency cardiac presentations a month. With the vaccine rollout to the under-50s, this rocketed to over 2,172 cases in November 2021 in this age group alone, which was 67% more than usual. Overall, 17,900 South Australians had a cardiac emergency in 2021 compared with only 13,250 in 2018, which is a 35% increase. The vaccine must clearly be the No. 1 suspect for this, and it cannot be dismissed as a coincidence. Australian mortality overall has increased from early 2021, and that increase is due to cardiac deaths.
These excess deaths are not due to an ageing population, because there are fewer deaths from the diseases of old age. These deaths are not an effect of Covid, because they have happened in places that Covid had not reached. They are not due to low statin prescriptions or undertreated hypertension, as Chris Whitty would suggest, because prescriptions did not change, and any effect would have taken many years and been very small. The prime suspect must be something that was introduced to the population as a whole, something novel. The prime hypothesis must be the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.
The ONS published a dataset of deaths by vaccinated and unvaccinated. At first glance, it appears to show that the vaccines are safe and effective. However, there were several huge problems with how it presented that data. One was that for the first three-week period after injection, the ONS claimed that there were only a tiny number of deaths — the number the ONS would normally predict to occur in a single week. Where were the deaths from the usual causes? When that was raised, the ONS claimed that the sickest people did not get vaccinated and therefore the people who were vaccinated were self-selecting for those least likely to die. Not only was that not the case in the real world, with even hospices heavily vaccinating their residents, but the ONS’s own data show that the proportion of sickest people was equal in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated groups. That inevitably raises serious questions about the ONS’s data presentation. There were so many problems with the methodology used by the ONS that the statistics regulator agreed that the ONS data could not be used to assess vaccine efficacy or safety. That tells us something about the ONS.
Consequently, HART asked the U.K. Health Security Agency to provide the data it had on people who had died and therefore needed to be removed from its vaccination dataset. That request has been repeatedly refused, with excuses given including the false claim that anonymising the data would be the equivalent of creating it even though there is case law that anonymisation is not considered the creation of new data. I believe that if these data were released, they would be damning.
Some claim that so many lives have been saved by mass vaccination that any amount of harm, suffering and death caused by the vaccines is a price worth paying. They are delusional. The claim of 20 million lives saved is based on now discredited models which assume that Covid waves do not peak without intervention. There have been numerous waves globally now that demonstrate that is not the case. It was also based on there having been more than half a million lives saved in the U.K. That is more than the worst-case scenario predicted at the beginning of the pandemic. For the claim to have been true, the rate at which Covid killed people would have had to take off dramatically at the beginning of 2021 in the absence of vaccination. That is ludicrous and it bears no relation to the truth.
In the real world, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea had a mortality rate of 400 deaths per million up to summer 2022 after they were first hit with Omicron. How does that compare? With the Wuhan strain, France and Europe as a whole had a mortality rate of under 400 deaths per million up to summer 2020. Australia, New Zealand and South Korea were all heavily vaccinated before infection, so tell me: where was the benefit? The UK had just over 800 deaths per million up to summer 2020, so twice as much, but we know Omicron is half as deadly as the Wuhan variant. The death rates per million are the same before and after vaccination, so where were the benefits of vaccination?
The regulators have failed in their duty to protect the public. They allowed these novel products to skip crucial safety testing by letting them be described as vaccines. They failed to insist on safety testing being done in the years since the first temporary emergency authorisation. Even now, no one can tell us how much spike protein is produced on vaccination and for how long — yet another example of where there is no data for me to share with the House.
When it comes to properly recording deaths due to vaccination, the system is broken. Not a single doctor registered a death from a rare brain clot before doctors in Scandinavia forced the issue and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency acknowledged the problem. Only then did these deaths start to be certified by doctors in the U.K. It turns out the doctors were waiting for permission from the regulator and the regulator was waiting to be alerted by the doctors. This is a lethal circularity. Furthermore, coroners have written regulation 28 reports highlighting deaths from vaccination to prevent further deaths, yet the MHRA said in response to a freedom of information request that it had not received any of them. The systems we have in place are clearly not functioning to protect the public.
The regulators also missed the fact that in the Pfizer trial, the vaccine was made for the trial participants in a highly controlled environment, in stark contrast to the manufacturing process used for the public rollout, which was based on a completely different technology. Just over 200 participants were given the same product that was given to the public, but not only was the data from these people never compared to those in the trial for efficacy and safety but the MHRA has admitted that it dropped the requirement to provide the data. That means that there was never a trial on the Pfizer product that was actually rolled out to the public, and that product has never been compared with the product that was actually trialled.
The vaccine mass production processes use vats of Escherichia coli and present a risk of contamination with DNA from the bacteria, as well as bacterial cell walls, which can cause dangerous reactions. This is not theoretical; this is now sound evidence that has been replicated by several labs across the world. The mRNA vaccines were contaminated by DNA, which far exceeded the usual permissible levels. Given that this DNA is enclosed in a lipid nanoparticle delivery system, it is arguable that even the permissible levels would have been far too high. These lipid nanoparticles are known to enter every organ of the body. As well as this potentially causing some of the acute adverse reactions that have been seen, there is a serious risk of this foreign bacterial DNA inserting itself into human DNA. Will anybody investigate? No, they won’t.
Danny Kruger: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; I am conscious that time is tight. I recognise that he is making a very powerful case. Does he agree that the Government should be looking at this properly and should commission a review into the excess deaths, partly so that we can reassure our constituents that the case he is making is not in fact valid and that the vaccines are not the cause behind these excess deaths?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support on this topic. Of course that is exactly what any responsible Government should do. I wrote to the Prime Minister on August 7th 2023 with all the evidence of this, but sadly I am still awaiting a response.
What will it take to stop these products? Their complete failure to stop infections was not enough; we all know plenty of vaccinated people who have caught and spread Covid. The mutation of the virus to a weaker variant — Omicron — was not enough, the increasing evidence of the serious harms to those of us who were vaccinated was not enough, and now the cardiac deaths and the deaths of young people are apparently not enough either.
It is high time that these experimental vaccines were suspended and a full investigation into the harms that they have caused was initiated. History will be a harsh judge if we do not start using evidence-based medicine. We need to return to basic science and basic ethics immediately, which means listening to all voices and investigating all concerns.
In conclusion, the experimental COVID-19 vaccines are not safe and are not effective. Despite there being only limited interest in the Chamber from colleagues — I am very grateful to those who have attended — we can see from the Public Gallery that there is considerable public interest. I implore all Members of the House, those who are present and those who are not, to support calls for a three-hour debate on this important issue. Mr. Deputy Speaker, this might be the first debate on excess deaths in our Parliament — indeed, it might be the first debate on excess deaths in the world — but, very sadly, I promise you it will not be the last.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Maria Caulfield:
I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) on securing this important debate. I only have five minutes of this 30-minute debate to respond. I will try to cover all the points if I can.
Can I start by acknowledging that the hon. Member is correct that we have seen an increase in excess deaths in the last year? However, I disagree with his analysis, because the causes that he refers to simply do not bear out the statistics that we have. There has been a combination of factors contributing to the increase in excess deaths, including, in the last year, high flu prevalence, the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, a strep A outbreak and conditions such as heart disease, which he touched on, diabetes and cancer. Because we had had virtually a lockdown of routine health services over a two-year period, many people are now coming forward with increased morbidity and mortality as a result.
I will start with winter flu. The number of positive tests last year peaked at 31.8%, the highest figure seen in the last six years. Interim analysis from the UKHSA indicates that the number of deaths in England associated with flu was far higher than pre-pandemic levels, so the excess deaths due to flu last winter are, sadly, part of the answer.
The hon. Member touched on the independent body, the ONS. Its figures show that the leading cause of death in England is still dementia, which accounts for about 10% of all deaths. It also looks at the cause of excess deaths. If we look at the figures as of June this year, the top three causes of excess deaths are respiratory illnesses, dementia and ischaemic heart disease, which is often caused by an increase in cholesterol, smoking or not having a blood pressure check. There are a number of reasons, and they are often chronic conditions that people have had for years, or in some cases for decades; they are not acute illnesses.
In the three minutes I have left to respond, I will touch on some of the points that the hon. Member made. First, on the importance of vaccination, it is very easy to say that there is a prevalence of high rates of Covid vaccination in people who have died. That is correct: when 93.6% of the population have had at least one dose of the vaccine, there will be a high rate of vaccination in excess deaths. That is different from causality. I completely agree with the hon. Member that there is a high prevalence rate, but that is not the same as saying that vaccination is the cause of those deaths.
The Office for National Statistics has looked at this, and those who have been vaccinated have generally had a lower all-cause mortality rate than unvaccinated people since the introduction of the booster in 2021. A recent study in Singapore looked at unvaccinated patients who had recovered from Covid, and showed that those patients had a 56% higher risk of cardiac complications a year later than those who were vaccinated. There are conflicting data on this issue, and I am not necessarily disagreeing with the hon. Member, but I think we need to have a robust conversation about it, not to assume that one side necessarily has all the answers.
I will touch on a couple of points that the hon. Member made about vaccine safety. The regulator has been taking account of those who report adverse events, and I encourage anyone who has had a side-effect from any of the vaccines to use the Yellow Card system and report it to their GP. When those side effects have been reported, the MHRA has taken action. In April 2021, the MHRA reacted to rare cases of concurrent thrombosis and thrombocytopenia following the AstraZeneca vaccine, which resulted in adults under 30 not being offered that vaccine. In May 2021, that was increased to adults under 40. With regard to the mRNA vaccine specifically, following reports of a link between Covid vaccines and myocarditis, the Commission on Human Medicines conducted an independent review in June 2021, which found that the incidence of that side-effect was rare: between one and two cases per 100,000. When there are concerns, we absolutely must investigate them. There is no doubt about that.
We had a debate earlier this afternoon about those who have experienced rare side effects from the vaccine. We do have the vaccine damage payment scheme, which offers a payment of £120,000 if that is shown to be—
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For a start, the Pharmaceutical companies must never again be indemnified by Governments against claims for damages for one of their products. The potential penalties for marketing a poorly tested, dangerous product must be prohibitive.
As we are currently seeing, the families of those who have been killed by the gene therapies and those who have been permanently disabled or injured, have no recourse to the Pharmaceutical companies and the Government’s which coerced the population to take the product are basically refusing to admit they have caused any harm, even as their own monitoring systems are sky-rocketing with deaths and injuries and Coroners are recording that death was caused by the “vaccine.”
I’m assuming our friend making the one and only thumbs down is one of the executives of big Pharma.
A good article, which sets things out ‘fairly’…and that’s the problem…that fairness goes one way..and in my opinion the wrong way…..
Like many people I have probably thought, or never given much thought in the past, to pharmaceuticals.. believing my doctor when they said I needed something.
But I now honestly believe ‘fairness and honesty’ just isn’t in their lexicon….they will do anything…and I do mean anything to make money and to push their products, and if it maims injures and kills…so what? They genuinely don’t care…that much is obvious, both from the history you’ve mentioned to the Covid fiasco…The collusion with Governmental bodies is now so intertwined that there isn’t a chance of it ever being fair or independent.
(The TV programme ‘Dopesick’ shows this brilliantly)…
In light of the Pfizer papers one might think eyes had been opened, that ‘fairness’ might have crept in…that they might take a break to assess things….hahaha…but they are still jabbing with gusto….any day now from six months old for goodness sake…and in light of evidence to the contrary they are still telling pregnant women it’s safe!!
It’s like asking Nazzis to take a minute to reflect on their policies…They are liars, untrustworthy, and don’t give a fig who they harm and kill…it really is that plain to see.
but if you don’t want to see it you won’t….
I have no intention now or ever of giving them a ‘pass’…and I’m afraid when ALL snouts are so firmly in the trough they don’t see the problem or want a solution either..everything from their perspective is hunky-dory.
There is no question now that Bozo and his comrades are wholly complicit. They knew these injections were unsafe but still allowed, and continue to allow, indeed push their use. Bozo and Co should be first in the dock.
The charge street will be the longest in British history.
“There is no question now that Bozo and his comrades are wholly complicit.”
His comrades include those in allegedly ‘opposition’ parties who have fully supported the government in this crime against the people…and then we have the despicable actions of the ‘caring’ NHS which has wantonly taken on the key role in the massive indefensible charade…
To reminisce
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/response-to-the-british-government-proposal-to-roll-out-a-covd-19-vaccine-before-christmas/
1) There should be executive criminal liability ie people should go to jail for life
2) Penalties and fines for companies should be large enough to affect their ability to trade
3) In the UK companies are effectively protected from legal suits by the politicised Legal Aid Agency – this should stop. In the UK citizens were unable even to sue Merck over the notorious Vioxx
4) If we are going to have licensing agencies they should do a proper independent job not the present sham which confuses the public about safety
5) Otherwise get rid of licensing and make suing the companies easy if they misrepresent things.
A wise article. A major problem now is the fact that at the governmental level, there is no independent organisation acting in the public interest. Instead, they seem to be operating on the commercial side of the field, encouraging the use of trial products, from “free” advertising to insurance (via granting financial immunity) for any damage done.
Excellent article. Thank you.
It’s very hard to suggest how to reform a system that is so completely broken.
Change is only likely to happen from the bottom up. So reforming medical training has to be an important element. Medical training needs to completely independent of the pharmaceutical industry. And that training needs to emphasise the importance of extreme sceptism of the pharmaceutical industry with all it’s corruption, perverse incentives and conflicts of interest. The training needs to emphasise the importance of identifying the root cause of chronic illnesses rather than identifying pharmaceutical interventions to mask symptoms. The training for chronic illness needs to concentrate on lifestyle interventions such as nutrition as a much better alternative to pharmaceutical drugs for chronic illness. And that nutrition training must be independent of the arguably equally corrupt processed food industry. At the moment clinicians are largely trained representatives of the pharmaceutical industry. As I understand it doctors get next to no training on nutrition.
Incidentally this video covering statins by Maryanne Demasi is a good case study that shows everything that is wrong with the pharmaceutical industry and the whole eco system that relies on them.
Great link, thanks. My scepticism is spreading to all aspects of healthcare.
Also thought this was an excellent article.Having worked in the NHS for over 30 years as a clinician & trainer before retiring, I have seen numerous treatments and interventions be introduced with high expectations, only to lose favour as the side effects and lower than anticipated outcomes emerge. This was really brought home to me working in the management of long-term pain and being clinically involved with people experiencing dependency and addiction problems after being prescribed opioids. I know this has been said numerous times but I have found it hard to understand the lack of critical thinking when it comes to the vaccine rollout & the levels of coercion involved. It is sites like this that have provided some sort of balance amongst the mayhem. I do have concerns about the new format and already feel that the flow of information has been reduced now a donation is required to comment. Can appreciated the need to generate income but for me the comments were as least as important as the articles.
The lack of critical thinking isn’t that strange, most people don’t care to think too hard, just makes life more difficult. Certainly when the so-called regulatory bodies that are supposedly there to protect us from the profit seekers keep maintaining that the vaxx is safe and effective. Even a fool can see that the claim of safety is extremely dubious and the claim of effectiveness starting to sound like a bad joke, but as long as responsibility can be placed with the regulatory agency, most people refuse to think beyond that. At this point I’m not sure who I despise more, the profit seeking pharma companies or the shameless sell-outs that call themselves regulatory bodies.
As for your latter point, I wholeheartedly agree. The comments BTL are a big draw to this site, even for people who don’t comment – or, more likely, take a while before getting around to commenting – I was lurking on the site for about 3 months before I got an account.
Some people commenting had made the point that they had lost jobs / businesses during the lockdowns, perhaps for some 5 pounds may still be more than they can afford. I too understand that income is necessary, but is there not a better way? I know I felt this seemed to be dropped on us, it might have helped to say this was coming (if it was stated somewhere beforehand and I missed it, my apologies). It might also be an idea to provide an option of paying a 3 month or 6 month amount? Maybe an option to donate on someone else’s behalf? I read of someone doing that on one of the substacks.
I don’t think it’s always about the money. Donating to a website involves identifying yourself, so maybe some people are concerned about privacy. But we need to be bold.
An annual payment option (as on many substack accounts) would be good, and it would bring in money up front.
Yes, I agree with the privacy issue and donations. This raises the issue of things like privacy policies etc. The downside is that levels of bureaucracy get higher & higher & regulation increases. Something of a double-edged sword with the sense that something important has been lost. I do think there needs to be an option to delete account information. I for one, don’t like my details being held ad-infinitum.
This site is so important it needs to be sustainable. It also needs to expand and add even more smart journalists and researchers. There are very few sites in the world providing the service as this site. Its mission is going to become even more important going forward (when increasing censorship will try to stifle all debate).
As such, IMO, it is imperative that this site has some kind of financial security.
I do agree that the loss of comments is lamentable, but I don’t know how the site can continue indefinitely – at a high quality – absent some steady revenue streams.
Maybe the subscription or donation minimum could be reduced?
I’ve noted that many mainstream news organizations have inflated their “paid subscriber” numbers by offering $1/month subscriptions for, say, four months. This seems to have worked. I mean $1/month is the same as 50 cents/month a couple of years ago – which would be about a penny a day.
People need to have some “skin in the game” if even it’s just a few cells of skin .. because “the game” ain’t no game anymore.
Cerezyme at $200K a year is not actually a particularly extreme example. There’s a common protein folding disorder ATTR amyloidosis for which there are I think 3 official treatments costing between $215K and $450K annually. Alternatively, there’s green tea extract or curcumin (turmeric), both of which showed considerable promise for halting and reversing the underlying pathology in shoestring preclinical studies a few years back; of course in the current system they won’t be investigated further. Were we ever to abolish pharmaceutical patents and the perverse incentives they create, there are a lot of potential low cost treatments out there.
That would be my idea as well: Abolish patents on so-called intellectual property. The term is already a misnomer as property is always something physcial no two people can own at the same time. Ideas are not physical, they can be shared freely without diminuishing their value to each individual.
The ideal way to reform the pharma industry would just be to abolish pharmaceutical patents, which are a relatively recent invention, with some European countries such as Italy only recognising them in the 1970s. With the exception of trade marks, disrespect of which is a form of identity fraud, “intellectual property” is not required for free markets to flourish, indeed it often stifles the very innovation it is claimed to promote. See for example the book Against Intellectual Monopoly, available here for free: http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm
The problem is bigger than this.
Our entire financial system is based around sales and profit and ‘short termism’.
We have had housing bubbles, off-shoring, wars, tech bubbles, gyms, health emergencies, space, year 2000 etc etc (feel free to add your own). The pharma financial complex is integral to pension funds and making the money go round.
I worked with a pharmacist years ago and he had worked in development and said that they were finding new chemicals almost on a weekly basis. The expectation was that would continue, but it didn’t. Since the 1980’s new drugs which actually do some good have become a bit of a rarity. Patents for slightly modified line extensions of existing drugs prolonged sales as did marking up prices for generics (Shkreli is out of prison now BTW).
The drugs that have been ‘invented’ have often been shown to have limited efficacy and lots of side effects and are becoming increasingly more expensive to produce (a bit like digging up coal).
The governments are forced to support the activities that generate money and quash any that don’t.
I think they have justified it to themselves for the following reasons:
So we get:
Specifically on the question above in relation to Pharma, my suggestions are:
1.Disband NICE. Provide information to doctors not guidance and allow comments so that doctors can get a range of opinions on treatments and then decide what is best for the patient. Such comments to be uncensored.
2.Halt the vax schedules for all injections and carry out studies to look at the difference between injected and not injected (without placebo at all).
3.Change the way that the vax efficacy calculations are done so that the absolute value is used not the relative value.
4.Set up a government production unit for generics.
5.Review all funding programmes currently ongoing in universities and ensure that where funding is given that it is not subject to external influence. Where funding is given half of that must be given free of any controls for research institutions to us as they see fit on their own projects.
6.Where research institutions have carried out research or development work of a product they must be legally entitled to a percentage share in any later sales. Where the work is government funded it must come back to the government.
7.Liability has to be held by manufacturers.
8.Holistic and naturopath practices to be supported.
9.Ban all research on human gene therapy products.
10.Research programme must state clearly who is providing funding, donors must not be permitted to fund projects that compete against each other (this is just a form of hedge funding).
11.Immediately pull all NGO’s into regulatory control and if turnover exceeds 1m tax them as a company. That these huge organisations have no real oversight is appalling.
I can dream….
With this development in Australia, pharma & governments will be committing further crimes against humanity.
Bodily autonomy? Forget it!
Nuremburg Code for Doctors Ethics re experimental medicine? What code???
https://worldtruth.tv/australia-to-forcibly-vaccinate-citizens-via-chemtrails/?amp=1
Suppression of alternative treatments, but especially silencing of preventative measures, by big pharma for disease ensures that they always have a ready supply of profitable customers. Interesting article on some of those cheaper alternatives
https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/6-bodily-tissues-can-be-regenerated-through-nutrition1?utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%3A%206%20Bodily%20Tissues%20That%20Can%20Be%20Regenerated%20Through%20Nutrition%20%28QWVteb%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter%20Sends-%20Updated&_kx=wjclBKoUFUBPS9g773etL09PHMLiMauxjdDIFTdRYnM%3D.K2vXAy
My Father used to maintain that the cure for cancer is already locked in a cupboard somewhere. There’s no money in curing diseases, only in treating them…
It’s actually worse: Imagine someone could cure cancer. Would the non-smoker and teetotaller lobbying organizations who are both politically powerful and very well connected be amused about that? Or would they rather try to to bury this disinformation together with the person who dared spread it as quickly as possible?
Cancer is the universal bogeyman everyone with a health-chip on his shoulders uses to justify his set of lifestyle commandments. Many of the people who are adamant about this work in the medical sector or rather, in the public health sector. They wouldn’t want to let go of their settled science. Certainly not if it meant people doing things they despise would nevertheless be living longer and in better health.
The MHRA stepped in to protect the best interests of their cronies in this instance:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/gcmaf-and-persecution-david-noakes-lyn-thyer-immuno-biotech
In my opinion, the pharma industry is a bunch of vultures feeding of a carcass someone else put in place. A cure or effective treatment (in the sense of manageing it) or even just serious research into cancer is politically undesired. Cancer is the just punishment for people making the wrong lifestyle choices, smoking, consuming alcoholic drinks and eating wrong things (like bacon). As these sinners must be forced to repent, there are ever increasing sin taxes supposed to effect that. That the government makes a handy sum from these is certainly just coincidence.
If the NHS (a government agency) was interested in curing cancer (instead of using it to browbeat sinners into submission), the pharma industry would provide a (doubtlessly patented and very expensive) cure. The government would make sure that it can be patented, even if it was stuff from undergraduate biology books which has been known for centuries.
“My Father used to maintain that the cure for cancer is already locked in a cupboard somewhere.”
I have been reliably informed that is indeed the case.
Still, if your “company” has an income of £640 million tax free and your head honcho takes home a very relaxing £240 k per year there isn’t really much point in spoiling the jamboree by announcing that cures for cancer have been known about for decades.
Cancer Research UK. My apologies.
We should remember that big pharma only get away with their crimes because governments and government agencies turn a blind eye, while much of the media has been bought off too. Read Robert Kennedy Jr’s book “The Real Anthony Fauci” to get a better picture of the corruption in the world of the pharma mafia. Money talks, and Fauci and Gates have together been involved in many highly dubious activities to say the least. The covid clot shots are the culmination of years spent perfecting their double act to dupe the entire world into believing in the existential threat of covid and that their “vaccines” are the only way back to normality. That these two men aren’t behind bars for life is disturbing in itself.
I think Horton says such things to enhance his own credibility but doesn’t remotely care. You think because he’s said it that Lancet is a good brand!
A lot of this one sided commentary applies to the USA, not the UK. There are errors over HERE, the MHRA approving the poisonous and useless Covid ‘vaccines’, but the Government controls prices and price gouging is not as common as is made out in the article.
What happens in the UK is that NICE, which vets treatments for the NHS, doesn’t approve the $400K a year treatment so you are still left to pay the $400K; I’ve contributed to a number of crowdfunding campaigns to fund expensive medication. But yes, the US has its own unique anti-competition laws that enable their healthcare system to charge absurd prices even for standard medicines. At least the UK has a more or less free market in standard medicines.
Some discussion here: https://lowdownnhs.info/drugs/billions-are-spent-by-the-nhs-on-drugs-every-year-but-how-does-it-work/ on the NHS’s purchasing power and how it helps to keep drug costs down.
The considerable purchasing power of the NHS can somewhat reduce the cost of a given expensive drug but what it doesn’t address is the bias of the drug development process itself towards expensive, dangerous and ineffective drugs that can be patented, and away from cheap, safe and effective drugs and non-drug treatments that cannot be patented. In fact as we’ve seen from the response to COVID, the NHS colludes with and promotes that bias.
Medicines take up around 14% of the NHS budget, just as they have since the late 1960s. Also, marketing excesses have been brought under control by the ABPI
Most manufactured items have become far cheaper since the late 1960s, even after massive innovation and improvement. There’s something very wrong with a system that approves Remdesivir for COVID and doesn’t approve fluvoxamine.
https://expose-news.com/2022/06/15/vaccinated-4-in-5-covid-deaths-canada-since-feb/
It is now quite evident from the covid panicdema that the goals of big pharma are: to get all vaccines mandated, to be protected against all liability and to have them all funded directly from government treasuries. The sums of money involved are staggering and so the funds available for influencing public health officials and politicians is enormous. Sadly IMO this will have a very negative outcome on the whole vaccine industry and trust in the Medicall Profession generally. I am not sure trust in politicians can get much lower.
This generation’s Thalidomide
This is an excellent article. There is so much evidence that the public are being harmed but what I find most alarming is how the Government and pharmaceutical companies get away with all this evidence being covered up. I believe (maybe naively) that the vast majority of humans are well-meaning and wish to do no harm to others, so how can there not be enough of these human beings in the world wealthy and powerful enough to bring successful legal action within a reasonably quick time frame? We have irrefutable, damning evidence against those responsible for hiding all this information from the public. This is what puzzles me the most. I’m an optimist, please help me.